A Terrible Secret
by plastic-chan
Summary: Lily has a sad story to tell concerning the man she loved, her husband, and her son.


This is one of the things posted to my lj. It was inspired by a conversation with my friend Elyse, who was supposed to write the same idea with a different twist. I chose angst (as is evident from the title) and she chose happy. Maybe someday she'll write her side of this. Anyway, Harry Potter and all related characters are not mine. Enjoy and please leave feedback!

**A Terrible Secret**

I didn't want to marry him. I really didn't.

Truth be told, I despised the man.

He was so cocky, so arrogant. Sure, he had an amazing body. Sure, he had gorgeous eyes. Sure, he was handsome and athletic and what most girls dream of.

But not me.

I saw the coldness in his eyes behind the shining blue. I saw the cruel twist in his gorgeous, straight-toothed smile, and how the smile never quite reached his eyes. I saw the way he would clench his fists sometimes while talking to people, as if he could barely keep from attacking them as they spoke.

But everyone else was so charmed by his joking manner and devastating good looks that they formed an unthinking, worshipping entourage.

But not me. I saw him. Everyone else was blind, but I knew what he truly was underneath.

A monster.

He was so cruel, just because he fancied himself better than everyone else. And most people were content to let him think that. But he knew I despised him.

I think that was why he sought me out. Because I_hadn't_ fallen head over heels in love with him. Because I, in fact, prayed nightly for him to break his neck or drown in sewage or just be revealed for the smarmy, cruel prat that he was. He wanted me because he knew I would refuse him.

He wanted to break me.

I held firm, though. I treated him coldly, brushed him off at every opportunity, and even befriended those he despised because they were "beneath him."

God help me, I even fell in love with someone "beneath him."

No one would have understood what it was that drew me to him. He was never much to look at, and I had such a "dreamboat" after me. But the so-called dreamboat was the stuff of my nightmares, and my love was nothing like him. He was so smart! He was brilliant, even. So quiet and introspective. You could tell just by looking at him that his mind was racing and he was observing everything, always learning, always eager to learn more, to better himself, to be the best.

So ambitious. I think it was his yearning to be best that drove me to him. The way he was so… _quietly_ ambitious. He tried so hard at everything he did, but he never made a show of it when he succeeded. He just sat quietly and took it all in, smiling on the inside because he had proved to himself that he could be the best. And then he would keep trying to improve, always wanting to better himself. He was never proud of what he did, at least not in the sense that he would rub it in anyone's face. He never used his accomplishments to belittle others. He simply liked being the best he could be at everything.

And he _was_ the best at everything. It makes me blush to remember, but I recall the night we first made love. We were so inexperienced, bumbling virgins, really. But I shouldn't say it that way; he didn't bumble. I knew he was unsure of what he was doing, but it certainly didn't seem that way.

He knew me, knew every part of me, like I had been made expressly for him. Truly, I think I was. He had always known me better than I knew myself, and that night was no exception. Nor were any of the nights that followed.

I had fallen in love with him ages before that night, but never managed to tell him until we were surrounded by candles and moonlight and the feeling that everything in our lives had been leading up to that precise moment. He smiled at me when I told him, and leaned in. He kissed me gently and whispered, "I know. I was just waiting for you to realize it." He kissed me again and told me he loved me too, that he had from the moment I had sat next to him in the courtyard and asked him about the book he had been reading.

We knew in our hearts, even as we made love, that we could never remain together. "We were meant to be," he whispered to me as we lay there afterwards. "…Just not in this life…" I finished, crying softly. He kissed my tears away and we promised to stay with each other as long as we could.

But love was dangerous, if you didn't love the right person, and we knew our love could not protect us from that danger. In fact, he was convinced it would put me in harm's way, and I believed him.

So one day, though it killed us inside, we started ignoring each other. We couldn't bear to be cruel or hurtful, but the silence was pain enough. After a few months of staying away from each other, I couldn't bear it anymore and went to him one night. We slipped away and made love one last time, knowing this time it had to be forever. It was too dangerous to engage in such a forbidden love.

This whole time, the arrogant prick had still not let up on me, and my friends kept pestering me to date him. I put him off as long and cruelly as I could, but one fateful day I knew I had to go with him.

So I ran to him, though it broke my heart, and told him that I'd been such a fool, that I loved him and wanted to be with him. I _begged_ the prat to marry me.

Don't judge me. I had no choice. …No one could know that the baby's father wasn't my husband. I had to marry him right away to make it believable.

With the child still in my womb, I performed spells in private to make him resemble the man everyone assumed was the father, and to delay the birth slightly so it would be plausible. No one could ever know. No one could even dare hint at it. I had to be sure no one could find out.

I lived a lie with my true love's child and the man I despised. The world grew more dangerous, and I welcomed it. I had once prayed for the death of the man I had married – now I prayed for mine as well.

And when it came, I was filled with a great and terrible joy. Joy because I was free now. Free from the lie.

But the joy was filled with pain because I died knowing that poor little Harry would have to live that lie forever. Because no one knew. No one would even dare suggest that Severus Snape was his father.

Not even Severus himself. He never knew.

And because I am dead, he never will.


End file.
